NEW YORK—For nearly the first three months of the season, the Orioles played brilliantly. There were solid starts, excellent relief pitching, some timely hitting with exciting comeback wins mixed in.
In the last week, the Orioles’ have sputtered, and after their 8-4 loss to the New York Yankees on Tuesday, they’ve lost six of seven games.
“When you play six months, you’re going to have periods of not playing the best baseball and we’re in that period right now,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “Tough time the last couple of weeks the game on the mound and the game at the plate together. We’re having a tough time scoring runs. I thought we’ve had a couple of good starts the last couple of games. Haven’t executed out of the bullpen. You’re going to go through periods of this period. Hopefully, we can bounce back and get out of this quickly.”
In their two losses to the Yankees, relievers have allowed key runs. Trailing 4-3 in the seventh, Nick Vespi and Bryan Baker allowed three runs. On Monday, Yennier Cano and Danny Coulombe yielded three runs in the seventh.
In their first loss, they had 12 hits, 10 singles and two doubles. They had six hits but hit two home runs that accounted for all their runs on Tuesday. It was their first multi-home run game in the past nine. They were 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
New York (48-38) struck quickly against Oriole starter Kyle Gibson, who walked the leadoff batter, Anthony Rizzo, and gave up Gleyber Torres’ 13th home run in the first.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s sacrifice fly scored Jake Bauers in the fourth for a 3-0 lead.
“I created my own issues, really,” Gibson said. “Missed with a couple of pitches when I was in leverage counts that led to at least two of the walks. If I don’t walk guys there, it’s probably a 3-1 game after six innings, and I feel good about it. Created my own issues and when you do that, most of the time it’s going to come back to bite you.”
Greeted by boos in each of his at-bats, Aaron Hicks, playing his second game against his old team, homered against Clarke Schmidt (4-6) in the fifth, and after Jordan Westburg doubled, Adam Frazier equaled his career high with his 10th home run, and the score was tied at 3.
Hicks has been booed incessantly in the two games.
“I kind of assumed that was going to happen,” Hicks said. ”I’m going to try to go out there and continue to battle and try to win games.”
Gibson (8-6) walked Torres with two outs in the fifth, and he scored from first on Giancarlo Stanton’s single to center, and New York (48-38) led, 4-3.
“I thought we got to the ball quickly,” Hyde said. “I thought Torres, who’s running unbelievably aggressively everywhere right now … we’ve got to keep our head up and get the ball in a little quicker, and Torres made us pay for it.”
In a marked improvement from his previous two starts, Gibson allowed four runs on three hits with four walks and four strikeouts in six innings. In the two starts, he allowed 11 runs on 16 hits in a combined 7 2/3 innings.
“One of those times during a season where it’s surprising because when you play so well for so long, consistently for 70 of these 84 games, we’ve played really, really good,” Gibson said. “You don’t expect to have stretches like this, but nobody’s immune to it. Every team goes through it.
“There are just things that are not going our way and you try to push forward and understand that you have five games left before the All-Star break, and you can make yourself feel a whole lot better by these five games going our way.”
The Orioles (49-35) loaded the bases in the sixth on a single by Adley Rutschman and walks to Anthony Santander and Hicks. Jordan Westburg popped to second, leaving the bases loaded.
Jose Trevino hit his fourth home run against Vespi in the seventh. Harrison Bader added a two-run double against Baker.
The Orioles were 19 games over .500, their highest point since the end of the 2014 season after they beat Cincinnati on June 29th. They’re 14 games over now.
“When you start off well like we did, you can give yourself a little bit of wiggle room to have stretches like this,” Gibson said. “Because of our start, you can maintain confidence a little bit better … We understand that we’ve put ourselves in a really good spot right now. We can weather storms like this. A good five games going into the break, and we can carry some momentum and you end up forgetting about these really 10 games that we haven’t really played well.”
Trailing by five in the ninth, Westburg scored on a double by Ramón Urias and an infield out by James McCann.
The Orioles have two more games against the Yankees and three at Minnesota before the All-Star break.
“We need to play these five games well,” Hyde said. “We have not played well in the last couple of games here. They’re playing way faster than we are … and we need to match that.”
Notes: The start of the game was delayed by 38 minutes. Oriole games have been delayed by 11 hours, 22 minutes this season. … Dean Kremer (8-4, 5.04) will start for the Orioles against Randy Vasquez (1-1, 1.74) on Wednesday night at 7:05.